Is MathWorks working on a dark mode for MATLAB similar to what Visual Studio offers?

Visual Studio's dark mode changes the background color for all the toolbars and all over the UI. The most that can be obtained with MATLAB is to change the background color settings of text,editors and workspace windows. There are many tools that helps achieve this like Scott lowe's version shared on community here MATLAB Schemer Is MathWorks working on a dark mode to achieve complete UI dark mode unlike the patch work that is available now?

[Shaun Currier]

I also hope they add this and that they include Simulink.

[Marcel Goldschen-Ohm]

I also hope this feature is added. I feel like this is a basic requirement of a modern top flight coding environment.

[Street Rock]

I totally agree with you, dark mode has become essential for any programming environment

[Shaun Currier]

I am also hoping for a dark mode. It's table stakes in 2019.

[Cyriel De Jong]

Agree!

[kusmae16]

I support the idea.

[Noah Cheesman]

This would be great

[Eric Lee]

I'm also piling on because it's 2020 and an IDE should have a darkmode. Quarantine has ruined my sleep schedule so I'd ideally not like to stare at white light while coding later in the day.

[Marlon Trujillo]

You can imagine working 8 hours straight in Simulink, that's horrible for your eyes.

[Dana Mozaffari]

I fully get behind what has already been said. This is a must feature, right now I have to work on my scripts on visual studio code, instead of matlab and that's very annoying

[Brian Andler]

negativescreen.exe?

[Guðjón Bergmann]

Yes, please fix those bright screens. We engineers are cave-people. We like working in the dark.

[Walter Roberson]

When I was in university, the engineers liked working in good light so they could see all their toys. Darkness was for drinking beer.

[Guðjón Bergmann]

Well, someone might like to have a beer in the dark while working with ML.

[Yuanhao Zhu]

Thank you for your feedback!

[M Herper]

Now nearly 5 years later there is still no dark mode, not even an announcement if or as to when we can expect it. Hundrets of tweets and videos on social media about everything - nothing about dark mode. Mathworks may consider it just a "detail" with low priority and difficult to implement. For my eyes it is the most wanted feature at all - I really hope it will come in R2023a.

[Walter Roberson]

I can answer that question.

Do not expect Dark Mode. Not at any time.

Do not expect ANY new feature that has not been announced by a project manager or higher.

ANY feature may be withdrawn at any point before release.

It does not matter that Mathworks is offering a beta test of the feature. Beta test can reveal problems that lead to substantial delays or to scrapping the project entirely.

The economy could take a bad turn and hypothetically Mathworks may have to cut staff. Or not. You don't know, I don't know.

So don't expect any feature at all until a manager at Mathworks tells you a release date for it.

[Steven Lord]

I advise you to follow the instructions in the accepted answer on this post.

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

Please see this Answer for more details on dark mode:

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/1671199-mathworks-it-s-time-for-a-dark-theme

Answer 2

[simcha van Helvoort]

I really hope they add a dark theme like visual studio.

Answer 3

[Jaromir Kabelac]

This needs to happen.

My eyes!

Answer 4

[Steffen Pe]

I also really hope they add dark mode. with automatic day/night switch and a button in the action bar

Answer 5

[Florian Besten]

I also hope for this! Maybe already 2019a or 2019b?

[João Correia]

aaaaaaaaaaaaand 2020a without it

[Joachim Arts]

Let's hope for 2020b...

[Irem Altan]

I mean how hard could it be? I bet mathworks devs are developing matlab using dark mode on their preferred IDE.

[Walter Roberson]

It could be a lot of work. It might be the case that a lot of different routines hard-code the colors, and that every one of those routines would have to be tracked down and converted to use a preferences system. And that at the same time, Mathworks is very likely working on rewriting major components of the IDE to remove reliance on Java. If you were setting budgets, would you consider it a wise investment to spend a bunch of time patching up a layer of code that you intend to get rid of as soon as feasible ?

Answer 6

[Benedict Bauer]

I also hope that Mathworks is working on a dark mode.

It would be really nice especially in Simulink!

Answer 7

[Keiland Cooper]

Right now it seems the only way is via preferences or schemer. I hope that they work on this, as most code editors now offer it.

Answer 8

[Walter Roberson]

NO.

This is not going to happen.

Pay attention to the changes in the graphics system, to the enhancements of App Designer and Web Figures. Mathworks is busy rewriting the entire UI and many Apps to use that new design, getting rid of Java. Within 3 years the UI replacements will be introduced and the existing UI will become legacy. Mathworks is too busy working to get rid of the existing UI to work on enhancements to the existing UI such as Dark Mode.

The new UI might perhaps have Dark Mode; I cannot make a prediction about that.

[Nathan Han]

Ditch the current java ui? Absolutely wise!

[Marlon Trujillo]

What is wrong with Java??? A whole OS is written using it...

[Walter Roberson]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Java

Large arrays and multidimensional arrays can lead to substantial performance challenges.

You also need to keep in mind that newer versions of jdk require end users to license per (virtual) desktop per user, so the ability of MATLAB users to load and call arbitrary Java methods means that Mathworks cannot use newer jdk unless it is willing to tell users that they have to make payment arrangements with Oracle.

[Abdolkarim Mohammadi]

I think Walter has indirectly answered the question (assuming he knows everything): Mathworks will work on dark theme as soon as it is fully done replacing the new UI. And this is logical. You first write and verify a new code and then enhance details like dark theme. But at that time, I might not be able to use dark theme because I will be writing codes using Braille font :)

[Image Analyst]

I'm not sure how many of you've noticed so far, but the Answers forum does have a dark mode for the code blocks. Click on the icon in the upper right corner of the gray code blocks. Only for code blocks, not for the rest of the page.

[Walter Roberson]

At some point I saw a hint that Mathworks is working on a darkmode, but I did not hear anything about how extensive it would be or what graphics systems would cover or timeframe.

[William Grand]

This is great news. I had not used Matlab for 20 years (since college) and was quite surprised that the UI seemed almost the same. My hope is that this move away from Java will allow for gesture-controls for pinch, etc. on plots and other modern macOS shortcuts.

[Walter Roberson]

I continue to think it is more likely that Mathworks will replace the entire traditional editor than it is to implement Dark Mode in the traditional editor.

[M Herper]

Come on Mathworks, Dark Theme for the UI is easy to implement and in professional software environment meanwhile a must !

[Walter Roberson]

M Herper: I have personally spoken to some of the developers of the feature. I did not catch why the software was originally designed the way it was designed, but they assured me that they were hard at work on retrofitting a preferences setup.

The next pre-release is likely to be made available within three weeks; it will be interesting to see what is implemented.

Answer 9

[saar nehemia]

I also hope MATLAB will have a complete dark mode (including toolbars and all).

right now, it is only possible to change the text and panels but not the borders... It doesn't look very well

Answer 10

[Image Analyst]

The Mathworks generally doesn't reveal in advance what feature enhancements they have planned. If they are working on such a feature you'll probably only know about it when it's released, either in pre-release/beta, or in the official release.

Answer 11

[DGM]

I've been using a workaround for years, and it is version-agnostic. The script is posted here, though you'll need to modify it for your own needs. I don't know if a similar technique is feasible in Windows.

http://epicbeardquest.blogspot.com/2014/09/in-my-recent-experiences-dealing-with_11.html

Simply put, I invert the entire display when I'm on a workspace with Matlab windows. This is handled automatically by the script that's invoked when switching workspaces via keyboard. Since I normally run a dark GTK theme, the titlebar and panel are still bright, but that's a small part of the screen, and I've taken to wearing a cap to keep room lights out of my field of vision, so the panel is usually out of view unless I look at it.

Of course, there are limitations to this approach. You still don't really get to customize the colors at all. You just get to darken the bulk of the UI area. You also have to deal with everything being inverted. For example, this surf plot looks right because it's easy to invert the colormap accordingly, but you can't apply inverted lighting. Using datatips on an inverted image can also lead to routine confusion if you forget that the image is actually inverted. If I need to return the display to normal, I just have a keyboard shortcut bound to xcalib -invert -alter , so I can swap back and forth when needed.

This ridiculous workaround is the reason that all the GUI tools in MIMT have options for use on an inverted display. I don't have to deal with manually inverting every image for display, imshow2(), etc does that all with the 'invert' option or a checkbox in the GUI.

[z8080]

Thanks a lot for sharing, this will be useful to many!

Answer 12

[cui]

Use "MATLAB online" to switch themes perfectly! Then use a browser plug-in (e.g. Midnight Lizard) to indirectly change the colours of various web pages(matlab online is also a web page type).

[DGM]

I suppose that works ... if you have a fast network connection, system resources to squander, you want to use that particular version and are willing to deal with MATLAB Drive, UI lag, and browser compatibility issues.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for bludgeoning ugly websites with userstyles. I just don't think there are any extant solutions to the OP's problem that are not ridiculous workarounds -- my own included.

EDIT:

I suppose that was a bit aggressive of me. If you had merely prefaced your solution with "If you use MATLAB Online ..." instead of "Use MATLAB Online ...", I wouldn't really have had anything to say. It's a legitimate and effective solution for those who use the online version. The wording just presumes that it (the onlne version) is a generally applicable option.

I'm probably still shedding frustration from the last time I had to use it, and that shouldn't detract from your helpfulness.

Answer 13

[mysiak]

It's time to release the dark theme.

In many other programs I am using a version of dark mode for at least 7-8 years. Everyone already recognized the benefits.

So should Mathworks do something about this, it's almost ridiculous.

And yes I am aware it's not simple task, but it's not something for 2 years of work.

[Walter Roberson]

Mathworks has a release process, and would never consider releasing something like this for existing MATLAB releases, not right now.

There is a new MATLAB release that is probably going to become public in approximately 3 weeks. If Mathworks has a dark-mode ready, it would be part of that release. Beginning of September is not time to release something like this.

If Mathworks does not have a dark mode ready, then it will not be part of the upcoming release.

... I don't know the time frame myself; I have been too busy to look at the notes about upcoming features.

Answer 14

[Jan]

I'm using Matlab Schemer from the FileExchange successfully and I'm happy with it. Unfortunately I cannot set Windows to the dark mode, because then the dialogs for saving or loading files are not displayed anymore.

Answer 15

[Varun Bansal]

After spending few days with burning eyes, I went into control panel and selected 'Invert color' option in windows, and now my Matlab bg is all black :) looks like a nice turbo C window

[Marlon Trujillo]

You need to invert the whole windows to be white now lol

Answer 16

[Shane Sullivan]

The Windows 10 "Invert Color" option is great. But you have to manually do it, and un-do it. And if you switch to other programs (where you don't want inverted colors) it is annoying. To use this, type in invert into the "Type here to search" field on the task bar, or if you don't have that search field, then just type the Windows key on the keyboard and immediately start typing invert. You should see a suggestion for Invert Colors system setting. Pick that and you'll get the Magnifier settings window:

Near the bottom you should see the Invert Colors checkbox.

Otherwise, you can install Easy Invert, and set it up to automatically invert only MATLAB! Then, problem solved! https://www.wintools.info/index.php/download#EasyInvert

[Michal Ciesek]

How to setup it for inverting Matlab colors only?

[Cédric Cannard]

This is great and simple solution, thank you Shane!

@Michal Ciesek just click oon the cross at the bottom left and check Matlab box; then Matlab apears in the main window and you just check it again, and done! :)

[Ningjun Liu]

This is a great solution! I really hope I saw your answer to this question earlier, but hey, it's never too late to fix something :)

[DGM]

Last I recall, Compiz supports single-window inversion, so that may be a similar option for Linux users. Personally, I don't use Compiz. I'd rather just conditionally invert the entire display. It's cheaper, and I don't have to deal with making sure it applies to every figure window that pops up.

Answer 17

[Leonhard Lücken]

Would be great to have dark toolbar, window decorations, etc! And the Live Editor seems to be resistant to scheming entirely... :(

[saar nehemia]

Totally agree. It would be really great to have a Dark mode like almost any programming enviroment today :)

Answer 18

[Berthold Reisz]

Simply go to the Home-tab in Matlab click on Preferences in the upper toolbar and choose Matlab colors from the left control panel. Remove the hook from "Use system colors" and select text white, background black. Subsequently, you can choose user defined colors for highlighting various keywords. Click on apply and you have your dark theme (apart from the toolbar).

This feature was already in my 2016b-version.

[madhan ravi]

Can you add a screenshot?

[Berthold Reisz]

[Berthold Reisz]

I hope the screen shot is large enough. There on the upper right you find "Preferences" next to the cogwheel-symbol and in the Preference window you find "Colors" in the drop-down menu on the left. If not, click on the upper entry called "Matlab".

... if the screen shot is too small or not completely visible, right-click on the image and select "view image" or something like this from the dropdown menu in order to see the full enlarged screen shot.

[Rik]

That doesn't actually answer the question. Schemer (the FEX sbumission referenced in the question) uses exactly these options (and a side-note: I just tested Schemer on my copy of R2011a, so it even works all the way back to that).

This is not a true dark mode, as things like the lint color can not be modified with documented tools.

I use the attached prf file (renamed to txt) for my personal settings. I also set the text limit line (Preferences>Editor>Placement) and the comment wrapping (Preferences>Editor>Language>Max column width) to 99, hence the name. Sadly those two settings can't be set by code as far as I'm aware.

[Berthold Reisz]

Hi Rik,

okay I understand. You also want the toolbars in dark mode. Initially, I got the impression some people just wanted to have a dark background for their editor, workspace and command window.

[Rik]

That is what dark mode would mean to me. I think I would expect such a dark mode to also affect default figure and axes properties (so you don't get blasted with a white screen if you create a plot), but I'm not sure that is ideal, as all other functions (like GUIs) that rely on certain defaults would experience issues.

[M Herper]

UI is still not a dark theme

Answer 19

[MathWorks Support Team]

Please see this Answer for more details on dark mode:

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/1671199-mathworks-it-s-time-for-a-dark-theme

Answer 20

[Image Analyst]

With release 2023a, dark mode is here. See

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/discussions/highlights/780745-try-dark-mode-in-the-matlab-desktop?s_tid=mlc_disc_email_submission